The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):

Digital Versatile Disc
Digital Video Disc
DVD
DVD-R
DVD-ROM

    (DVD, formerly "Digital Video Disc") An optical
   storage medium with improved capacity and bandwidth compared
   with the Compact Disc.  DVD, like CD, was initally marketed
   for entertainment and later for computer users.  [When was it
   first available?]

   A DVD can hold a full-length film with up to 133 minutes of
   high quality video, in MPEG-2 format, and audio.

   The first DVD drives for computers were read-only drives
   ("DVD-ROM").  These can store 4.7 GBytes - over seven times
   the storage capacity of CD-ROM.  DVD-ROM drives read existing
   CD-ROMs and music CDs and are compatible with installed
   sound and video boards.  Additionally, the DVD-ROM drive can
   read DVD films and modern computers can decode them in
   software in real-time.

   The DVD video standard was announced in November 1995.
   Matshusita did much of the early development but Philips made
   the first DVD player, which appeared in Japan in November
   1996.  In May 2004, Sony released the first dual-layer drive,
   which increased the disc capacity to 8.5 GB.  Double-sided,
   dual-layer discs will eventually increase the capacity to 17
   GB.

   Write-once DVD-R ("recordable") drives record a 3.9GB DVD-R
   disc that can be read on a DVD-ROM drive.  Pioneer released
   the first DVD-R drive on 1997-09-29.

   By March 1997, Hitachi had released a rewritable DVD-RAM
   drive (by false analogy with random-access memory).  DVD-RAM
   drives read and write to a 2.6 GB DVD-RAM disc, read and
   write-once to a 3.9GB DVD-R disc, and read a 4.7 GB or 8.5 GB
   DVD-ROM.  Later, DVD-RAM discs could be read on DVD-R and
   DVD-ROM drives.

   Background (http://tacmar.com/dvd_background.htm).  RCA
   home (http://imagematrix.com/DVD/home.html).

   (2006-01-07)